


Seeing You Again (Breaks My Heart)

by Morganna



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Romance, but they're teachers, hopefully, i don't know what im doing, no beta we die like cavs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 04:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30050085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morganna/pseuds/Morganna
Summary: The door to the diner opened and in walked Camilla’s cousin, Palamedes Sextus. Gideon grinned and raised a hand to wave him over. “Hey! Sex Pal!” She even went so far as to stand in greeting, except that made her aware of someone trailing after him.The woman looked like a collection of bats in a dress of somewhere around or above five layers of black that covered her neck and fell all the way down to her feet.As they drew close, Palamedes was saying, “Gideon, please don’t call me that,” but she barely heard him. The woman’s eyes met hers—both of them did a double take and Gideon said “Harrowhark?”And Harrowhark—for it was her—said, “Griddle?”“Griddle?” Camilla asked incredulously, which like, same. “Do you two know each other?”Together, Gideon and Harrow said flatly and with force, “No.”--high school teacher au no one asked for
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 45





	Seeing You Again (Breaks My Heart)

**Author's Note:**

> So...my first Locked Tomb fanfic! I have no beta and I'm pretty sure I'm mangling the hell out of this. I have never found two characters as hard to write as Gideon Nav and Harrowhark Nonagesimus. 
> 
> I've read so many Gideon/Harrow fanfics, you'd think I'd have a grasp on them even just a little, but alas.
> 
> Without further ado...enjoy!
> 
> (I'm not dead set on the title of the fic itself, so it's subject to change)  
> (Also rating may or may not go up; tags to be added as necessary)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alt title: "Surprise, bitch. I bet you thought you'd see the last of me."
> 
> Alt title: "Gideon likes MILFS. No surprise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...my first Locked Tomb fanfic! I have no beta and I'm pretty sure I'm mangling the hell out of this. I have never found two characters as hard to write as Gideon Nav and Harrowhark Nonagesimus.
> 
> I've read so many Gideon/Harrow fanfics, you'd think I'd have a grasp on them even just a little, but alas.
> 
> Without further ado...enjoy!

Gideon Nav had a hangover. Not the first one of her life, and certainly not the last. But she’d woken that morning terrified of having practice, only to realize it was Saturday in the frenzied process of brushing her teeth—and then that school wasn’t yet in session. Not for another week. 

She hadn’t meant to get shit faced the night before, but she’d forgotten to eat dinner, and had one too many vodka shots, and—well. There was her entire night. Gideon had woken up half way dangling off the couch, in nothing but her boxer shorts and one sock (her left) with the worst hangover.

So, of course she’d called Cam about it.

That was how Gideon found herself peeling her head off the laminate table to stare blearily up at her friend who asked, “Have you ordered yet?”

“Nope,” Gideon said as she leaned back in the booth she took up nearly all the space of.

Camilla Hect sat down across from her with the faintest traces of a smile. “Tell me again why you decided to get drunk, Nav.”

“Shove off, Hect. It was an accident.” At least from behind her aviators, the sunlight wasn't jamming daggers directly into her brain. More like ineffectual spoon stabbings. The evil little elves in her skull were still throwing a party with a bunch of sledge hammers, though.

“An accident,” Camilla said with that flat inflection that told Gideon she was being laughed at.

“Shove off,” Gideon said again, this time with a little more feeling.

Camilla didn’t say anything, only primly opened her menu and began to peruse it. That was even more condescending because they came here at least once a week, and both of them could recite the menu black out drunk. They’d done it. Gideon still had the recording saved to her laptop.

The server stopped by to take Camilla’s order, assured Gideon her own was on its way, and then they were left in blessed silence. Thankfully, though it was Saturday, the diner was mostly empty except for an older man on the other side of the room.

“You’re lucky,” said Hect, “that school hasn’t resumed yet. And that it’s Saturday.”

“As if I haven’t been telling myself that all morning,” she muttered into against the rim of her water glass. She had already drained it twice since she’d arrived, and planned on twice more before she acquired her food.

The door to the diner opened and in walked Camilla’s cousin, Palamedes Sextus. Gideon grinned and raised a hand to wave him over. “Hey! Sex Pal!” She even went so far as to stand in greeting, except that made her aware of someone trailing after him.

The woman looked like a collection of bats in a dress of somewhere around or above five layers of black that covered her neck and fell all the way down to her feet.

As they drew close, Palamedes was saying, “Gideon, please don’t call me that,” but she barely heard him. The woman’s eyes met hers—both of them did a double take and Gideon said “Harrowhark?”

And Harrowhark—for it was her—said, “Griddle?”

“Griddle?” Camilla asked incredulously, which like, same. “Do you two know each other?”

Together, Gideon and Harrow said flatly and with force, “No.”

And that was that. Palamedes cruelly—and predictably—slid in beside Camilla, so Gideon waved Harrow into the booth. No way in hell was she sitting on the inside.

Harrow slid into the booth with dignity and all but glued herself to the wall. Gideon, on the other hand, stayed so far on the outside she had one whole thigh off the vinyl seat. There were several inches between them, and yet there was no doubt that both of them wished it was more.

“Right—” Palamedes wiped his glasses off with the edge of his shirt and re-situated them on his face. “Gideon Nav, this is Harrowhark Nonagesimus…Harrow is our new art teacher. Harrow, Gideon is the high school’s soft ball and p.e. coach. She also works with Cam at the dojo.”

Neither of them spoke for several long moments. She was more than a little blindsided by seeing Harrow, but to learn she was the new _art_ teacher? Last Gideon had known, Harrowhark had been on the fast track to getting into one of the top medical schools in the world—Harrow had raised to be a doctor, and she’d been fascinated with bones since she was a toddler.

Gideon cleared her throat. Really, this shouldn’t be so difficult. After a decade, Gideon and the woman beside her were strangers. So, she rustled her manners to the sticking place and said, “Congrats on your position and welcome to Canaan High.”

Harrowhark didn’t even look at her as she nodded stiffly.

Camilla was eyeing Gideon in that way that meant Gideon was either going to spill her guts figuratively, or literally—aka the easy way or the hard way. Cam wanted the deets, and she was set on getting them.

Gideon focused on her food instead. She had six pancakes to get through, which she loaded up with butter, syrup, and grape jelly. She wasn’t immune to the disgusted look Harrow was leveling her way either—in fact, it made her grin in some sort of odd victory.

Palamedes and Harrow ordered—a full breakfast plate with bacon instead of sausage for him, courtesy of Cam staring him down for five minutes until he gave in and ordered…and plain porridge for her. It was such a familiar thing, Harrow ordering bland food, it about sucker punched Gideon in the face.

She didn’t want there to be anything familiar about the pointy right angles in a vague person shape sitting beside her.

Gideon ate ravenously, and mostly because if her mouth was full, then no one could expect her to join in the conversation. Not that there was much conversation to join in on. After that failure of a meeting and introduction, Harrowhark was as quiet and iced over as Gideon remembered, and Palamedes and Camilla’s conversation consisted of a bunch of long-suffering glances at each other.

Gideon ate her pancakes, ordered fruit and then sat back in her seat when she couldn’t possibly eat more. Thankfully, despite her own reticence—which really was not like her at all—the conversation had began to pick up a little. Well…as much as it could pick up, with Camilla trying for polite questions and Harrow answering them in a clipped, uninviting tone.

“Where did you grow?”

“Asheville.”

A look at Gideon because that was where Gideon had grown up as well. Camilla took a sip of coffee before she asked, “Where did you study?”

“North Tech.”

Two states away from where Gideon had studied, thankfully.

“What brought you to Caanan High?”

For a moment, Harrow said nothing. The crease between her brows deepened and she absently stabbed into her porridge with her spoon. “It was the only job offer worth it’s salt within the tri-state area.”

Gideon raised one incredulous eyebrow. This whole thing was unequivocally surreal. Seeing Harrow, Harrow being an _art teacher_ , and being here, of all places—Gideon was starting to wonder if the alcohol had killed her, or maybe shifted her to a universe one up and a little to the left.

Palamedes decided to save Harrow then, leaned forward as he mostly ignored the food in front of him. “Harrow and I met at a conference this summer. I mentioned Canaan high and that our art teacher was retiring.”

“Ah, good ole Miss June.” Gideon grinned. “It’s too bad, she was a looker.”

Cam’s deadpan look went right over Gideon’s head. “She was in her fifties, Nav.”

“It’s called being a MILF, Cam,” she shot back easily, her eyebrows waggling behind her aviators and lips twisted into a grin.

Harrow shot her a completely disgusted look and opened her mouth. Gideon could already hear the “You haven’t changed at all, Griddle” said with a sneer. Instead, Harrow’s mouth snapped shut and she took an aggressive bite of porridge as if that got her point across.

Palamedes cleaned his glasses judgementally.

Camilla had a slight glint in her eye that told Gideon she was—rightfully—amused.

“Listen, I’m just saying—”

“Don’t continue that,” Palamedes said in his best stern-teacher voice.

Gideon tilted her head. “Sorry, Sex Pal, you’re not my type so the voice doesn’t work.”

Bless her, Camilla nearly spit out her drink. It was the highest honor Gideon had ever received for one of her comments.

“Gideon,” he said again, this time in exasperation. At least it was fond.

With a grin, Gideon let the subject drop and when the waitress came around, she graciously paid the bill without complaint. She walked back to the table while putting the receipt and her card into her wallet.

Camilla raised one eyebrow ever so slightly. “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah. Hate to eat and ditch, but I didn’t get to the gym and I’m spoiling for a work out. Will I catch you at the dojo later?”

“Obviously.”

“Sex Pal—” (“ _Gideon—_ ” He started, then stopped, and relented to the nickname was a sigh.) “—good seeing you, as always. Harrow, pleasure to meet you.”

Harrow nodded. “And you,” she said mildly, spine stiff as a board.

“I’ll see you around,” Gideon told the table at large before she tipped an imaginary hat and left them.

In truth, Gideon did want to go to the gym. But she always wanted away from Harrow and all the problems that arose from her presence. Cam’s inquisitive, and knowing stares, the way Palamedes was no doubt working out the connections in his head.

Gideon had ran away! She was supposed to be free of Harrowhark Nonagesimus, not thrown back into her orbit. And in the one place she’d assumed she was safe, too—her job.

Her head pounded, a different sort of ache on top of the dulled but still present hangover headache. She needed to hit something, and fast.

Once at the gym, she didn’t manage to hit anything. But the weight lifting centered her in a way it always had. Her mind cleared and she could focus on the weight of it, the burn in her arm, and counting each rep.

As she did, she realized that it didn’t matter if Harrow was at Canaan High. Gideon was always in the gym or the ball fields, places Bone Mistress of Drearburh would never be caught dead or alive. And Harrow was an art teacher, their spheres didn’t intersect. They could orbit around each other, probably rarely see one another—hell, Gideon was willing to tailor a new schedule so they didn’t come into contact period.

By the time she left, she’d decided that her earlier anxiety was for naught. They were in two different spheres and, as the two didn’t intersect…like ever.

Everything would be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going at this whole TLT fanfic stuff on my own. If anyone wants to put me out of my misery and talk TLT with me, I'm @9thhouseflower on Twitter and NinthHouseFlower on tumblr.
> 
> I am also on Discord and looking for a locked tomb group to join, if possible.
> 
> Not sure when I'll be updating, unfortunately. I'm a fast typer and I love to write, but I also have a lot of pain in my fingers because of those things. I'll try not to keep y'all in suspense for too long! During the wait, I'm also going to try to do some planning so I have a firmer grasp of where this is going, too. Since I'm flying blind at the moment.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading!


End file.
